Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink… Out the viewport the countless millions of stars shone, motionless, too far away to light the dark room, but old enough to still be seen at such a distance. Blink. Blink… On the dashboard below blinked a red light, casting its glow across the empty space, yet out of sight of the stars. The room itself was sparsely populated, with no furniture save for the dashboard and a vacant chair. It was still, until the door at the back end of the room began to silently slide open. A man slowly floated in, holding a small cube, taking his place at the seat. He popped the cube into a receptacle on the dashboard, then pushed a button on the dashboard to activate the voice-com. The viewport suddenly changed from the stars to a video capture of himself, as he quickly stood up.
“We’re in luck, Mr. Ainsley. Preliminary tests of the planet’s atmosphere suggest that it could be capable of supporting our form of life! You may not have to change course just yet.” He then picked out the cube and held it up to the screen, saying,
“I’ll also be sending the tests results over so that you can verify for yourself. The next step will be sending down surface probes, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated. Take care, we’ve almost made it.” The man then pressed another button and the screen reverted to the view of the stars. On the verge of tears, the man sat back in his seat, staring out the viewport.
“I’ve never really seen the stars before, have I?” he said to himself.
“Never seen much of anything but the ship, really.” Eventually, through his anticipating daze, the man noticed the blinking red light labeled “Incoming Message.” Upon pressing another button, the viewport flashed to another new screen reading, “You have 1 new message,” before flashing once again. This time, the screen showed a woman with a big smile standing in front of a similarly small yet much cozier room. The man himself smiled at the image as the video began to play.
“Hey there! It’s only been a couple days since you left, but we’re all starting to miss you around here. I wish you hadn’t left, but at least it’s for a good cause, right?” The woman laughed slightly, though a bit strainedly.
“In any case, you’re probably still in cryosleep and won’t see this for… Another week? We’ll meet again soon enough, I guess. Until then, safe travels.” The screen again flashed, reading, “End of message,” before reverting back to the image of the stars. The man laughed slightly, before rising from his seat. He pressed the record button on the dashboard, and the screen behind him changed once again.
“I miss you all too. Don’t worry about me, as long as I have you to talk to, I’ll be just fine. Things are really looking up for us out here, just you wait. We’ll meet again soon, I promise.” The screen once again showed the stars, as the man turned and said to himself,
“I’ll just go prep the surface pods, then. Get ready for another cryosleep.” As he made his way to the door, he paused for a moment and looked back at the screen, the red light no longer blinking.
It was a month later when the man awoke again. He never enjoyed going through cryosleep, it always gave him the strangest dreams; trapped, alone in the cold. It meshed with the waking terror going in that the machine might malfunction somehow, that he might never awaken again. It was for that reason that he made sure that the cryopod room was furnished warmly, similarly to his family cabin back on the homeship; the only room with any real furnishing. Even so, he always woke up with an uneasy feeling in his stomach, and had to sit for a few moments, thinking.
“It kind of sucks, yeah?” he told himself.
“All I’m doing here is going between the cryopod and a few screens. Why am I even needed here?” before dressing himself, grabbing the small storage cube from his small desk, and making his way to collect a status update from the surface pods.
The laboratory was a relatively large room as compared to the cryopod or communications rooms, but that space was largely taken up by a scientific computer and all its storage modules, a mishmash of the less resource-intensive elements of older and newer technologies. As soon as the man opened the door he had to avert his eyes from the harsh white lights, not yet adjusted from the softer yellow light he preferred to decorate with. As soon as he was able, the man sat down in front of the large screen of the computer and put the cube into a receptacle on its dashboard. At the push of a button the thing hissed to life, and it registered a connection to the probes. The man pulled all the data from the probes and began organizing it into several graphs and tables. The longer he did so, the lighter the look on his face became. Once satisfied by his work, the man turned off the machine and removed the cube, placing it in his pocket. As he made his way to the communications room, he couldn’t help himself from tearing up slightly.
When the man entered the room he saw that the red light was blinking again. In the shadow of his cryosleep dreams, it made the man happy that there were other people to talk to, even if they were a month or so away; it helped him feel less alone. Out the viewport was a stunning sight; the planet in all its glory. It was the first planet the man had ever seen in person, and it was everything he had imagined, the turquoise atmosphere blending in with the vast oceans, interspersed with long stretches of green, grey, and white. The man placed the storage cube in its slot and activated voice-com once again, making sure to root himself to the floor and stand straight.
“I’ve got the results back, Mr. Ainsley, and it’s better than I could have ever imagined. The atmospheric gas content is extremely similar to earth’s, with similar proportions of nitrogen and oxygen. The only anomaly would be the high amounts of argon, but a noble gas shouldn’t hurt anything. The atmospheric pressure is reasonable as well. But there’s something else…” The man pressed another button on the dashboard, switching the screen from a video of himself to the view of the planet, feeling.
“Look at all that green. I’ve confirmation from the probes, but still I can hardly believe it. There appears to be some kind of rudimentary plant-like life down there; at least something organic in the soil.” The man reverted the view back to himself, and he couldn’t stop himself from tearing up as he said,
“Sir, I think we’ve made it. For the first time in… Generations… Humanity will have a planet to call home. I’ll keep you updated, sir. Take care.”
With that, the man stopped recording and sent it out. He then pressed the messages button and the screen flashed, saying “You have 2 new messages.” The first showed a fairly short man in a suit, his neatly-combed hair a greying-black color. Behind him a strange, pulsating sound could be heard.
“Good work, I look forward to seeing it for myself. Hopefully your probes will also come up with favorable readings.” The man on the screen, Mr Ainsley, paused for a moment, a distracted look on his face before continuing.
“I suppose I should warn-” The recording suddenly cut out, reading “You have 1 new message,” and the man’s heart skipped a beat.
“What was that?” he thought to himself. Suddenly, the dashboard produced a shrill ding, and the screen read “You have 2 new messages.” It flashed to the woman now, a concerned look on her face. The room behind her was in mild disarray, and the sounds of shouting could be heard, muffled by the thick aluminum walls.
“Goodness, I hope you get this. Nobody’s heard anything about you from Ainsley for a month and a half, and they’re getting antsy. You remember how some of the less stable people were suspicious that there is no planet? They’ve been saying that your mission was a failure, that you’ve been killed as a coverup. Something crazy like that. I don’t know how or why, but that idea’s spread throughout the ship faster than should be reasonable. Please send a message on the common channel. Talk some sense-” The screen flashed, saying “You have 1 new message.” The man sat, a look of concern having replaced his previously jovial expression. The final message was an image, not a video, showing the status of several of the homeship’s systems. It was a distress beacon, a remnant of older times when there was more to humanity than one starship. The message itself was garbled, likely due to the system’s age and lack of maintenance. However, the only legible section showed that only one of the four scouting ships remained operational, while one was still away. The man panickedly scrambled to change the frequency of his transmissions, and begin a recording.
“Hello, everyone! I’m okay. I’m right in orbit of the planet, and it’s actually better than any of us expected. See?” He switched the view to show the planet outside.
“Please don’t do anything else rash! Just keep on. Please…” He then stopped the recording and sent it out, a sinking feeling spreading throughout his body.
“It should take at least two weeks to get a reply,” the man thought.
“I can’t just sit in cryosleep, not while this is hanging over me. But what can I do for two weeks?” With a sigh, the man set the computer to take him out of cryosleep if a message was received, then prepared himself to drift off.
The dreams this cycle were particularly bad. The man sat in his cabin on the homeship, but it felt wrong. All the furniture was torn and destroyed, the only light visible was tinged a pale blue. Cold radiated from the now-bare metal walls. Through the walls he could hear shouting; tens, maybe hundreds of people. He tried to stand, move towards them, but he was stuck in the seat. He shouted out, hoping someone would hear him, but to no avail. He could feel the shouts shaking the room, pulsing. He struggled and struggled, slowly tiring, until he couldn’t anymore. With one last shout, he awoke.
The first thing he noticed was the shaking. Like in his dream, the man could feel a pulse moving throughout the ship. The door hadn’t opened to let him out of the pod, and panickedly he pounded on it, trying to pry it open any way he could. Then, when a pressure suit dropped from above, he realized what had happened.
“How did we lose air?” He quickly pulled on the suit, then indicated to the door that he had done so. The cryopod cycled, and the man walked out. He saw down the corridors that the alarm lights were flashing. The halls were filled with strange debris particles; less reflective than the metal of the walls, seemingly chalky.
When he opened the door to the communications room the man’s heart dropped. Where he had hoped to see the message indicator light casting red across the room, it was off. Panickedly, he made his way to the dashboard and began a recording.
“Hey, are you guys there? I’m fine, okay? Please just let me know you are too.” He sent out the message and sat, willing to wait as long as he had to for a response. But when the viewport reverted to the view of space, the man saw little things whizzing past; little white things, similar in color to the debris in the corridors. He shot up from the seat, barely avoiding hitting his head on the ceiling.
“Micrometeors? Why now!” He now understood. Each pulse of the ship was one of those things hitting it, piercing the hull if big enough. It was a miracle that the ship hadn’t lost power yet. Just one of the little things could have killed him, he realized, and one of the others still might. His first instinct was to land the ship, wait for it to pass.
“But this ship wasn’t designed to take off from a planet. It hasn’t enough fuel!” he argued. “I may never know if they’ve made it! And they might never know where I am…” Either way, the man realized, he would be alone. He was quite possibly the last human left in the universe, but whatever happened he would die never knowing the truth. The man looked again at the red light, waiting for it to begin to blink; some indication of life.
For a couple of hours he sat waiting, thinking. All the while the oxygen in his pressure suit decreased, and the room slowly filled with small rocks, a few of which narrowly missed the man. Eventually, with a sigh, the man cupped his head in his hands and began pressing buttons on the dashboard.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. With the final press, the man strapped into his seat. He saw his life aboard the homeship flash before his eyes, all the people he’d known. He saw the green fields of Earth, the blue skies and oceans from his textbooks, and he wept as the thrusters began to fire and he descended towards the planet alone.